The conference room was still.
Still in that suffocating way that only followed hours of polite warfare, words turned to blades, logic turned to armor. The city lights stretched far below the Invoke Tower's glass wall, but inside, the air was cold, tight, deliberate.
Adrian Kael leaned back in his chair at the head of the table, one finger drumming softly against the inlayed steel surface. Around him, the board waited. Helena, Victor, Elias, Regina, Damien, and the others, each a picture of composure, masks worn to perfection.
Merlin sat among them, his golden eyes fixed and unreadable. He hadn't spoken in ten minutes. Not since Kael's last statement.
And that statement still lingered.
"—The Lazarus Core will change the landscape of warfare. Permanently."
No one had disagreed outright. Not yet. But the silence was its own battlefield.
